Woman to Woman:  Why Your Homegirl’s Relationship Advice is All Right and All Wrong
3.24.08


NEWSFLASH -- A friend of mine had yet another major argument with her boyfriend/mate/on-again-off-again fiancé a couple of weeks ago.  As usual during this time of turmoil, she did what most women do in the midst of anger and confusion from a relationship – she turned to her inner circle of female friends for counsel.  Since we’ve all known her for years, we gave her varying degrees of the same advice (End it since neither of you want to grow up.)  And as usual, she listened to us, took in our words of wisdom and nothing changed.  Over the years, I’ve noticed this recurring pattern more and more.  So something must not be working.  We know our friend and we know her complaints in terms of her relationship, yet our advice seems to often miss the mark.  After thinking about it, I realized that this is all par for the course and while I hate to admit it, there are several reasons that advice from girlfriends is at once extremely useful and utterly worthless.  This duality becomes increasingly obvious as we get older and our intimate relationships with men become more central to our lives.  To break it down, there are concrete reasons why turning to your female friends for guidance during a time of relationship turmoil is both helpful and hurtful.

How it Hurts:  The Futility and Pointlessness of a Woman’s Advice on Men

To be real, I’m writing this article for somewhat selfish reasons and since some of our male subscribers may actually read this, I admit to airing dirty laundry.  But I’m doing so as a single woman who is tired of being asked for advice that sistas have NO INTENTION of ever using.  Let me state here that there is a certain wastefulness in advising a woman who is in a relationship.  Even the BEST advice goes much further in an emotional conversation between two women than it ever goes between a woman and her man:

Mind Made Up

Most women seeking advice have an unintentional tendency to present their problem as if they haven’t already chosen its solution.  (But they have.)  Rather than say they just want to vent their frustration with themselves and their mate, they act as though they are willing to make some fundamental or drastic change.  Occasionally, rarely, sometimes this is the case, but usually it isn’t.  One of the most reoccurring questions is, “Do you think I should leave him?”  If a woman is still presenting this thought in the form of a question rather than a firm statement, chances are she ain’t going no wheres.  Still, she’ll insist on exploring the possibilities of ending the relationship.  She then sets about soliciting advice on how to handle this departure that is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Your advice on parting ways will be seriously discussed and genuinely debated, but it is almost never followed.  Why?  Because unless the problem is how to end the relationship, that’s not the solution she wants either.  Though it would sound desperate and pathetic in a conventional sense, advice would be much more useful if women just said, “I’m pissed and hurt, but ain’t going nowhere.  Help me get through this time and all the ones that are sure to follow.”  If more “girlfriend sessions” opened with these words, my advice may have a chance to get implemented. Why?  Because the solution she’s looking for usually involves how to stay rather than how to leave.  At the root of it, she’s more likely than not trying to find a way to return to the status quo rather than redefine it.

Insufficient Info

Most relationships are between two people.  Only those who are actively participating in the relationship know its full history, problems and triumphs.  At most, girlfriends get snippets.  We hear of the highs and the lows.  We get told about the flowers for no reason, the infidelity (also usually for no reason), the time he’s defended his woman’s honor and the time he’s blatantly disrespected her.  These are the moments of interest and so they get shared.  We aren’t likely to be woken up at 3:00am by a phone call concerning how everything is moving along just fine.  In short, giving relationship advice is like being asked to pilot a plane without being told if it’s a single engine deal or a jumbo commercial airliner.  This lack of crucial information is nearly always an issue when a friend wants to hash over an argument she had with her man.  We get told the premise and why she’s upset.  Some women, particularly those who know their man comes off as triflin’, will present his side of things in an attempt to be more “even-handed.”  Then they ask the inevitable, “So girl, what do you think?”

Here’s what I usually think, “I don’t really know enough to tell you anything useful.”  All I know is that ya’ll have a difference of opinion.  I don’t know if this is truly your first time having this disagreement or if you’ve been working up to it for weeks, months or years.  I have no idea if the argument in question is really masking a much deeper argument or a much shallower one.  Because I’m not in the relationship, I don’t know if it’s even really an argument as much as a vehicle for fighting, sex or pushing one another’s buttons.  Here’s something else I don’t know – how much this even matters to you.  Oftentimes women reach out in the heat of the moment as if one argument or confrontation is “the one” that will determine the future of the relationship.  But it could be just how she and her man chose to start their morning.  In addition to these more “surface” issues, women often neglect to mention if physical contact was involved and how much they contributed to it.  And for those on the other end of the spectrum, for a variety of reasons, many will omit that violence or another form of abuse is the real reason they’re arguing.  Beyond that, all people (and this would include women) have a tendency to downplay less popular motivations.  Rarely do people say, “I’m arguing with his baby’s mother because I’m mad that the only man I could find already had three children.”  Or “Why can’t he just accept that I’m unreasonable about this issue and love me anyway?”  Another more honest statement than, “What should I do?” would be, “We fought about how he mismanaged money because it really screwed us up this month since I’d already overspent on something else.”  Perhaps the most honest statement would be, “He’s so freakin’ imperfect, but he’s mine and I really want to talk about him.”  That wouldn’t even require me to say anything!

Women Aren’t Men and They Aren’t Your Man

The final major reason that girlfriend advice is misguided is the most obvious:  Women are not men.  You’d think with breasts, vaginas, menstrual cycles and pregnancies, we’d remember this fundamental fact.  Yet in the heat of a relationship conflict, we often forget it.  While I can sometimes gather enough clues to figure out why a man says something offensive to one of my friends, cheats on her, makes her cry or believes he needs to end a relationship, my powers of understanding are limited.  Women don’t think like men.  And here’s the flipside:  Men don’t think like women.  Why do we forget this?  Because when you’re involved with someone of the opposite sex intimately enough and long enough, they’ll get to learn you as an individual.  Through trial and error they will usually figure out your thoughts, emotional triggers, motivations and intentions.  And you (as a woman) will often do the same.  Still, this doesn’t mean that you understand men.  It just means that you understand your man, at least enough to want to resolve a conflict.   As you perfect the art of knowing one another, the relationship should strengthen or disintegrate based on whether or not you’re motivated enough to stay together.  It goes beyond love, as women are excellent at loving their mate or the idea of belonging to someone without simultaneously loving themselves enough to act in their own best interest.

But I digress.  The reason girlfriend advice is typically ineffective or useless is that women are often asking their female friends to relate to, understand and empathize with male behavior.  It’s a little like being a chemist in a physics lab.  You know enough about science in general to figure some good things out, but it ain’t your area of expertise.  We usually forget that we understand so little about men.  If you read enough books and listen to enough talk show hosts, you’ll be fooled into thinking that men are just simpler than women.  This has a certain element of truth, although most males would replace the word “simpler” with “uncomplicated” or “to the point.”  So women, being the insightful and intuitive creatures that we are, fool ourselves into thinking that because we are more “complex” we can easily understand, dissect and manipulate someone who is more “simple.”  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  If you don’t understand someone, the reasons why don’t necessarily matter.  At the risk of sounding condescending, you may know more than a 3^rd grader if you’re a 4^th grader, but if you’re living in a 3^rd grade world, your 4^th grade knowledge is of limited value.[i]  Why?  Because the 3^rd grader may not need it yet or ever.  Some women would argue that in a relationship the world would be split between the 3^rd and 4^th grader.  Perhaps, but when trying to understand someone’s motivations or thought process, you’re entering their world.  So I ask, how does knowing how to divide help when all he needs is multiplication?  He’ll just look at your more complex math and go, “That’s nice to know, but what does that have to do with the test I’m taking?”

But we lose sight of all this and don’t think of male/female interaction in this way.  We think that men are easy to figure out.  Yet even if they are, that doesn’t make it any easier to effectively relate to them during times of conflict.  The last time a friend asked me, “So why would he do something like that to me?”  My answer was, “Since I don’t have a penis, and I’m not him and I have no idea what it’s like to be in a romantic relationship with you, I don’t know why he did that or anything else.  Shit, I don’t even know if what he did was to you or for your relationship.”  I can guess.  I can assume.  I can conjecture.  And I may do one or all of these accurately.  But I will never truly know.  It seems rather ridiculous to go to a cat and have it meow an explanation for a dog’s behavior.[ii]  Yet in a sense, this is what we do.  And we provide advice based on a model of thinking very much divorced from the very person we’re focused on. Most women know that they can’t change their man, and oddly enough most advice from other women is on just how to do such.  No wonder it fails.

How It Helps:  The Utility and Purpose of Sista Circle Advice

So it would seem that I feel there’s no point in seeking the counsel of your homegirls during a rough time in your relationship.  But that isn’t so.  For all the reasons advice from women about men is pointless, it also serves its purpose.  Many a marriage are still in tact because I woman could vent to her female friends.  The pressure for one’s mate to completely agree is lessened when there are others willing to let a woman know that her viewpoint is not only valid, but also shared by other sane individuals.  The kind of naked neediness that can stifle a relationship gets to breathe among women who have your happiness and sanity as their top priority.  Even the strongest and most independently minded women need a space to breakdown without fear of punishment.  I’m not saying that place can’t be in a romantic relationship with a man, but particularly in the early stages, it’s best handled elsewhere. 

There’s also great value in venting to people who know your personal history and habits.  Women are experts less on what advice to give than what questions really need to be asked.  And while we have circumscribed understanding of men and their ideals, we have keen insight into how their actions, words and motivations affect the friends we love.  A good female friend will tell you when you are hurting even if you can’t bring yourself to admit it.  We also have a great deal of empathetic patience and readily pull on our own past experience when watching a friend struggle to make a tough decision that may unravel the delicate safety net of her relationship.  I know (directly and indirectly) women in good relationships that just need a little tweaking here and there.  I also know quite a few others who are lying to themselves about the true state of their romantic union.  Yet they’re at the stage where they aren’t strong enough for honesty just yet.  And a good female friend, a woman who has a genuine love for you and value for your happiness, won’t slap you when you’re sleepwalking, but will do their damnedest to help you wake up.  The ones who know you best will do a good job of noting how your man is slippin’ and when necessary, how you are doing the same.  The ones who care about your health and your happiness will objectively point out when your man is trippin’ and when he’s really trying.  At the root of it, girlfriends will help you realize that if it’s hard being you, it can be even harder to be with you.

So the advice of women has its place.  It can breed complication, contention and conflict but it also has the power to imbue solace, assurance and sanity.  Just keep in mind that your girlfriends can help you much more than they can help your relationship.  That part is up to you and the man you should be sharing a life with or getting away from.  If you want to help your friends help you, be honest about why you’re opening up to them. Be honest concerning what you want help on, what you want left alone and who you really are in the friendship and in your relationship.  And for God’s sake, if you just want to share angry words, laughter or tears, go on and do so.  But don’t ask for advice that you know you can’t or won’t use.